Sideliners Pub & Grill in North Prairie, Wis., 120-seat pub with a sports bar theme, has been open for a little over five years.

Chef Carlos Medina describes the menu as traditional pub fare.

“We don’t consider ourselves a normal pub, due to quality of our food,” he says. “About 85 percent of our dishes are made in house, including our dressings, wing sauces, chili and soup. Our volume speaks for itself.”

Popular dishes include a fish fry on Fridays, ribs and corned beef that are slow cooked and original appetizers, such as Pepper Jack Won Tons with house-made pepper jack cheese. The pub sells a lot of pizzas and also is known for its sandwiches, burgers and potato pancakes made from scratch.

Although the menu is extensive, the kitchen size is not, with food prepared in just 25 feet-by-20 feet. This space formerly was dominated by a conveyor oven, but Medina was seeking a better solution.

Two cooking cavities allow you to cook simultaneously at different temperatures

“We decided to test drive Ovention’s MiLO®oven, which can be stacked for double the production in half the space,” says Medina.

In addition to the space savings, the big difference is MiLO’s infusion of decoupled air and infrared (IR) technologies. This hot air in the enclosed space provides even and consistent cooking with a higher yield. The IR elements, located on the top and bottom of each cavity, provide efficient caramelization without over drying food. Active venting capabilities remove humidity from the cavity, providing higher yields and better results. The top and bottom cavities’ temperatures also can be regulated independently with separate control panels.

Ovention’s MiLO ovens are all ventless, providing added flexibility for installation location. It also provides USB loading capabilities for ease of programming and sharing settings between ovens.

Sideliners Pub & Grill is benefiting from MiLO oven’s versatility, as the two units prepare at least 10 of its menu items.

Make over 40- 12″ Fresh Pizzas per hour with our Shuttle 2000 Oven

“We can use this oven as a cheesemelter. Other ovens didn’t have that capability, since they’d drop in temperature,” says Medina. “It’s where I cook our pizzas, finish ribs and potato skins, and bake cheese bread.”

As a smaller-sized restaurant, Sideliners Pub & Grill can operate more efficiently with the MiLO oven, cooking a 16-inch pizzas in just two-and-a-half minutes. With traditional convection ovens, pizzas would take four times as long.

Cutting edge decoupled air and infrared enables you to serve even more delicious

“On a Saturday night, we typically do 40 to 50 orders of ribs, and these come out in just two to three minutes,” says Medina. “The quality of the cooking is much more even. In a traditional oven, there’s always one brown spot on a cheesecake, so we’d have to spin it to cook evenly. With MiLO, there’s no need to open the oven and rotate product for even browning, which saves labor.”

For restaurants like Sideliners Pub & Grill, which have two to three hours of high volume at a time, it can be difficult to keep oven temperatures consistent.

“With MiLO, I can cook to the oven’s capacity and keep temperatures consistent,” says Medina. “And because the cooking process is faster and easier with one button operation, we’ve been able to change the kitchen protocol to be much more efficient. The capabilities are endless.”